zenstones

Sus­pend belief. Lev­i­tate as imag­ined. Wake­ful dreams above the whis­per of a city look­ing for a friend. Every breath becomes a hur­ri­cane of warmth on a cold day. Find a stranger and kiss them with your eyes. Fall into their smile with fond words and hope they will catch you. If they do not try again, a stranger becomes a friend. One day they might save your life.

Adorn your­self in the silk of the sun. Make your­self vis­i­ble to the world with the song of hel­lo. Erase the word “stranger” from your vocab­u­lary. The only thing strange here is one who doesn’t accept the beau­ty of chance and the romance of an encoun­ter. Open your arms to open­ing eyes. Dance with your words aimed at the fel­low sit­ting beside you in the cafe, or the gal pass­ing you now on the side­walk. Ask them for an edu­ca­tion, and they shall lead you for­ward into their dreams of the real. When our eyes become excla­ma­tion marks we know it is time to live always know­ing we must live for the oth­er.

Enmeshed with com­mod­i­ty cul­ture iden­ti­ty becomes entrop­ic. Once a flu­id won­der­ful thing it begins to lose sense. Frag­ment­ed desires pull in infinite direc­tions. The lust­ful ills of wish­ing to be defined by the out­side world and the oth­er. Pathol­o­gy. Pure and sim­ple pathol­o­gy. The irony is that the more one wish­es to define one­self the less def­i­n­i­tion one has. Pol­ish mere­ly hides the cracks which define. Deter­min­ism is for those beg­ging to be con­trolled. A flow­er in a field defines and dif­fer­en­ti­ates itself pure­ly through its own exis­tence. It does not trick itself into believ­ing it needs to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from anoth­er. Its uni­ver­sal intel­li­gence born of the cos­mos reminds it that it is sin­gu­lar and unique. Beau­ty comes not from self-ascrip­tion but from exist­ing as is, a pro­duct of one’s self.

Fideli­ty should not be an issue when it comes to a city. One must real­ize that nei­ther the city nor her coun­try is capa­ble of tru­ly lov­ing one back. A city must offend to be loved, and to live with­in a city requires a bro­ken heart. There would be no oth­er rea­son to work for her atten­tion and grat­i­tude if not in an attempt to mend one’s heart and to make amends for some unknown fault or dam­age caused. She won’t turn her back on you, there is no back to turn, but she will pun­ish you by plac­ing you in com­pa­ny of oth­er peo­ple all vying for her atten­tion too.

The ten­der­ness we feel is too often quelled by the anx­i­ety pro­duced from the oth­er. We mustn’t nav­i­gate the world with such sub­tly and instead pro­fess the sub­lim­i­ty of our nature in the con­fi­dence and grace of our foot­steps. To accept the nego­ti­a­tion of the accep­tance of an oth­er with a smile, a nod, a hel­lo, a hand­shake, a hug or a kiss on the cheek. This is the ten­der con­tract and it begins with human con­tact. To wor­ry less about one’s self is to already accept the audi­ence of the oth­er with­out wor­ry in our already clum­sy but spec­tac­u­lar dance of life.

Under the blue light of a young moon the breeze stirs up dust and dried flow­er petals from the stone street. This is the way that the city breaths. Moments before dawn a rogue church bell clangs in the dis­tance. The neigh­bours are pack­ing their rusty pick­up truck with fruit and veg­eta­bles before haul­ing them to mar­ket. The sky begins to turn pink and the birds begin to sing. Traf­fic puls­es to the rhythm of the lights and pedes­tri­ans weave their way through the stopped cars. Impa­tient horns announce the com­ing of a new day. The bus to work is more than rou­tine, it is med­i­ta­tion. The city breaths and we syn­chro­nize.

The zenith of con­scious­ness comes at the moment we real­ize that we have for­got­ten some­thing. We stare inward at that blank void in an attempt to mar­ry our stub­born unaware­ness with some sem­blance of a mem­o­ry. The mem­o­ry seems to shift away the moment we feel we might grasp it. We prowl around the cir­cum­fer­ence of our con­scious­ness like a cat above an emp­ty fish­bowl. Every­thing is crys­tal clear yet we can­not seem to find it any­where. If luck is on our side it might just appear out of nowhere in time for us to snag it with our lit­tle paws. But often enough, we must for­get that we have for­got­ten some­thing before it blos­soms once again before our eyes.

Some flow­ers are more beau­ti­ful in their after­life. The colour fades from once vibrant to a pleas­ant earth­ly shade and the pun­gen­cy dulls as the flesh dries. The flow­ers have been pur­pose­ful­ly hung upside down to dry or have been neglect­ful­ly for­got­ten in a cup or vase. The skele­tal remains to be found on the floor or scat­tered on a table. Why should any­one dis­card of the­se lit­tle reminders of a life once lived? Clean­ing them up and throw­ing them away, like rak­ing leaves in the fall, only gives the appear­ance of order. But the mind and her thought is nev­er clear until we accept that no mat­ter where we put them, in the garbage or in the dump, wherever, they will return to the earth regard­less of our hand. The wilt­ed mushy stem or leaf gives new life, new colour, a new pun­gen­cy, so just watch her and be with her. Take what you can to remem­ber her glo­ry in life and in death. Hon­our her by giv­ing her a new life by show­ing her what she meant to you.

About

A teacher, poet, writer, artist and musi­cian. A man of many inter­ests who enjoys the pur­suit of under­stand­ing and the val­ue of knowl­edge.

My writ­ing and artis­tic endeav­ours con­cern them­selves with trans­ver­sal or inter­sect­ing nar­ra­tives and the entrop­ic nature of his­to­ry with­in the scope of an anti­his­toric­i­ty that pulls at and ques­tions the con­cept of an endur­ing authen­tic­i­ty.

My work is explorato­ry, inves­tiga­tive and polem­i­cal yet sen­si­tive. I draw inspi­ra­tion from sur­re­al­ism, dadaism, ultra­ism and zen. I prefer to view the uni­verse as nei­ther com­plex nor sim­ple, but instead as a series of poet­ic acci­dents and mis­takes unfold­ing before our curi­ous eyes. This is the prin­ci­ple that guides me, my per­son­al narrative(s) and my work.